CD washing questions

[eidean]

When you do a hot wash, do you use a cold rinse or a warm rinse? How about with any extra rinses?

I've got Bumgenius 3.0s. I'd been doing cold rinses but I've been having stink issues and I wondered if a warm rinse would get the residual soap out better? I tried stripping them with dish soap and lots of hot washes, but they started smelling again right away. Kmart didn't have sport wash, and I haven't gone out to look at any of the other places people recommended yet--must do that soon though!

I suppose a change of detergent might be in order. We've been using the Amway stuff (SA8, I think) which they say is supposed to not have any fillers and stuff. I have a sampler of Tide so I'm going to try that. Maybe I'm just using too much, but I'm not hardly using any of the Amway stuff and it still seems like I have to rinse forever to get rid of suds--so much that I wonder if I'm saving any money CDing. Old top-loading washer, it's probably only a few years younger than I am!

Any advice? TIA!

[JBaxter]

Ive been a Charlies soap user for years.

My wash routine hasnt changed since mylast son

Cold rinse with some vinegar

Hot wash/cold rinse longest cycle w/ 1/2 cap of calgon water softener


extra cold rinse


Every month or so I wash them with a squirt of dawn dish soap

[GonnaBJulymom]

Whenever I rinse, I use cold.

Try this for stink (not my usual washing regime):
Tide original (use line 1 of scoop) and add 1/4 cup of bleach in full load. Rinse till no bubbles show up!

Good luck! :thumbsup:

[shawnandangel]

I have BG 3.0. This is how I wash:

I use Allen's Naturally Detergent. Only 1 Tablespoon per cycle. http://www.cottonbabies.com/product_info.php?products_id=203

One wash cycle on cold
One wash cycle on hot - once a month I add 1/4 cup bleach to this wash
Rinse cycle on warm - I add a little vinegar to this about twice a month.

[edurnemk]

If you have hard water, add a water softener (Calgon). I use a cold rinse, and actually run a full cold cycle with no detergent after the hot/cold wash to get rid of ALL the suds. I switched to Allen's NAturally and the stink problem gor better. An the less the detergent the better. With Allen´s I use about a teaspoon, for 10 diapers, if I use more I get way to many suds and it takes a millions rinses to get it all out. Peep into your washer during the cycle, if in the last rinse there´s still some suds in the water, you need to use less detergent and/or add another rinse.
If you have AIO´s be careful not to use vinegar or bleach too often.

[Andi98989]

Given that baby is still on the way, I don't have person experience with this, but I did find this page and thought it was pretty interesting reading and have bookmarked it for future use.

http://allaboutclothdiapers.com/how-to-wash-cloth-diapers/

I did pick up some Bac-Out to keep on hand. I had some towels with an odd stink to them that I couldn't git rid of. On a whim I threw some Bac-Out into the wash with them and the stink is gone. :bouncy:

[carolinamama]

I am going to be the minority on this board and say try the Tide and use enough to get them clean. I think we are so ingrained to use less detergent but then our dipes don't always get clean depending on our water, washer, and other things we use. At least this is what happened to me when I was trying all the natural detergents, vinegar, baking soda, bac-out etc. Here is my routine (after months of stink while I played around with it):

Cold rinse with 3 big squirts of bac-out
Hot wash with 1/4 cup Tide (original powder)
Cold rinse
Hot wash with nothing added (just set the washer for another hotwash/cold rinse cycle)
Cold rinse
And I stopped looking for suds. So what if I have to strip a few times a year, I'll worry about it then.

HTH. Stinky diapers are no fun.

[eidean]

Thanks for the advice, I now have a few more things to experiment with.

Another question: about bleach. Will it damage the shell part of the BG? Take away the colors? Should I only wash the stuffers with bleach or the whole thing? Thanks--I've hardly ever used bleach on any of my laundry, so I'm a little uncertain on how to proceed.

[JBaxter]

in the 2 kids I have had in cloth I have never used bleach ( pretty anti bleach here I dont even know if I have any in the house)


I would strip them with dawn first ( if your having stink issues)

Cold rinse
Hot wash w/ a big squirt of dawn and a cap of calgon
rinse
rinse ( check for bubbles)

if bubbles

Hot wash w/ calgon cold rinse
repeat till no bubbles

here is a great chart of detergents

http://www.pinstripesandpolkadots.com/detergentchoices.htm

[daisymommy]

Personally, I think that if you are doing 2 whole wash cycles each time, that is waaaay overkill. You shouldn't have to do that. Besides the fact that the water and electricity usage is probably costing you an arm and a leg.

We've been using cloth for 7 years now--yikes!

Here's my wash routine, and is what I have read on most cloth diaper websites as well:

-Cold rinse
-Long hot wash with detergent
-Extra rinse

As far as how much detergent, that's where people differ depending upon their water type. Most people use 1/4 cap for soft water, 1/2 cap for hard water.

Right now I'm using Arm and Hammer Essentials--unscented (the natural one in the green bottle).

You shouldn't have to be adding all kinds of extra stuff unless you are doing a one time "treatment" to your diapers to fix a problem, but not on an ongoing basis.

Hope that helped :wink2:

[carolinamama]

Personally, I think that if you are doing 2 whole wash cycles each time, that is waaaay overkill. You shouldn't have to do that. Besides the fact that the water and electricity usage is probably costing you an arm and a leg.

You shouldn't have to be adding all kinds of extra stuff unless you are doing a one time "treatment" to your diapers to fix a problem, but not on an ongoing basis.

Hope that helped :wink2:

I do agree with you and think your routine is what I see most. I am only doing one more tub of water than you are doing, although it is hot. I will probably cut back to the rinse in the near future and see if that works okay. But I was stripping multiple times and literally running rinses all day long and still having major stink problems. :irked: So I tried this (found it recommended on Diaper Swappers) and it's working for us. After months of stink, I am beyond happy to have clean dipes again! :D Just wanted to throw out a different perspective in case it helped anyone.

[edurnemk]

Thanks for the advice, I now have a few more things to experiment with.

Another question: about bleach. Will it damage the shell part of the BG? Take away the colors? Should I only wash the stuffers with bleach or the whole thing? Thanks--I've hardly ever used bleach on any of my laundry, so I'm a little uncertain on how to proceed.

Since the inserts are the ones that usually stink, I'd use it only on those. BG doesn't recommend using bleach too often. I called to ask and they said using it maybe once a month was OK, but not in every wash because it will deteriorate the PUL and elastic.